Technical Field
The invention concerns a steerable beam antenna system using a phased-array of planar elements.
Background
A conventional phased-array antenna enables a highly directive antenna beam to be steered toward a single certain direction. The direction of an antenna beam may be controlled by setting the phase shifts of each of the antenna elements in the array. However, to enable higher mobility, the phase shifts must be updated more quickly than conventionally practiced. In addition, cost and space considerations eliminate the obvious deployment of parallel data buses. For sensitive RF circuits and interconnection in an phased-array antenna, it is also necessary to simplify and confine the amount of digital interconnection. Thus it can be appreciated that what is needed is a more efficient way of dissemination of the phase shift control information to a substantial number of phase shifters for an antenna array with a high number of antenna elements and possibly more than one simultaneous target.